ClayMonsters

ClayMonsters is a game where you shape, raise, and battle clay-like monsters with your own hands. Pit the monsters you’ve created against the CPU or other players, defeat powerful foes to earn points, and create even stronger monsters. It’s a monster creation and battling game that puts the emphasis on creativity and personal expression, letting you build the strongest monster that only you could make.

Monster Creation

In Monster Edit, you can freely edit and paint the bodies of your clay monsters. Their shape, size, and body composition affect their stats and moves, and you can save and manage your models across multiple slots. The editing tools are tricky at first, but once you get the hang of them, you can create whatever you have in mind.

Training and Skill Tree

In Training mode, you undergo a 5-day training regimen where you grow your monster by selecting actions. Amid varied daily eventssuch as motivation boosts, special events, and sudden attacks by powerful foesyou learn new moves, rearrange your move set, and save and inherit your training progress. The Skill Tree allows you to enhance starting stats and training efficiency, giving you long-term progression to work toward.

Real-Time Combat

Combat is real-time and one-on-one. You manage distance by moving in and out, and attack by combining multiple moves. There are also strategic elements such as counterattacks, limb destruction, knockbacks, and limb restoration. CPU battles include free matches and tournaments with varying difficulty levels, while player-versus-player battles offer room code matches and random matches.

Monster Sharing and Desktop Pet

In the Exhibition Room, you can view and download other players’ creations, and save models you like to your own slots. Uploading your own monsters and downloading ones made by other players is a really cool featuremaking your own monsters is something you don’t get in most other games, and you can tell there’s real technical ambition here. With the Desktop Pet feature, you can display the monsters you’ve created on your desktop. They move autonomouslywalking around, resting, and sometimes sleepingand you can relaunch the main game from the right-click menu.

Reception and Community

The game is very new and has only a handful of user reviews on Steam, so there is no broad consensus yet. One reviewer with nearly four hours logged praised the sculpting mechanics, noting that “sculpting models is tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it, you can create whatever you have in mind.” They also appreciated the inheritance system that eventually let them build stronger monsters after initially struggling with later enemies, though they felt the Career Mode was “a bit light on content.” Another reviewer with half an hour logged called it “a really cool concept” but felt it “lacks any depth in terms of gameplay and progression,” noting that navigating the monster creation screen is tough due to a hidden WASD camera rotation and that “lots of little things like that add up to make this feel a tad half-baked.” The community is still tiny, and anyone who picks it up now would be discovering it before almost everyone else.

System Requirements

Minimum: Windows 10 64-bit (version 21H1 or later), an Intel Core i5-4590 / AMD FX-8350 or equivalent, 8 GB RAM, and a DirectX 11 compatible GPU (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 / AMD Radeon R9 280 or equivalent). You’ll need 2 GB of storage space, a broadband internet connection, and a DirectX compatible sound card. Recommended: Windows 11 64-bit, an Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600 or equivalent, 16 GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 580 or equivalent, with 3 GB of storage space.

Who Is This Game For?

If you love monster-raising games like Pokémon or Digimon but want something that puts the creation process directly in your handswhere you sculpt, paint, and customize every part of your creaturethis is exactly your kind of game. If you enjoy the loop of training, battling, and earning points to build an even stronger monster, the 5-day training regimen and skill tree give you plenty to work toward. It’s also for players who appreciate a game that lets you share your creations with the community and download monsters made by others, turning the experience into a collaborative showcase of creativity. And if you just want a charming, unconventional game where you can make a clay monster that sits on your desktop and keeps you company, this one has your name on it.

If the game has you charmed, may fortune favor your victory!